Silk Road

Linking China to the westernmost reaches of the Western Empires, the Silk Road played a prominent role in world history. From 200 B.C.E to 1450 C.E although many goods were traded, due to different nations rising and falling, patterns of interactions both changed and stayed the same.

From 150 B.C.E to 900 C.E, the Silk Roads were important as goods from different parts of the East (China) and the West (Roman Empire) were traded. Pastoral nomads played a key part in the Silk Road either by threatening to interfere trade or by improving trade connections. Traders and travelers were able to acquire pack animals and pay for protection from the nomadic tribes. While Indians along with Jews, Greeks, and Armenians were particularly active as middlemen along the Silk Roads, transporting merchandise for a large part of the distance. Particularly in 200 B.C.E the Silk Roads linked western China to the easternmost reaches of the Roman empires. The Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire were respectively dominating their own regions and were both very rich and powerful. By trading luxury goods such as silk, spices, oils, and jewelry, both empires benefited especially during the Han Golden Age and the Pax Romana.

However when Western Rome fell in 476 C.E, trade along the Silk Road fell. When Eastern Rome rose again as the Byzantine Empire, they picked up where the Romans left off. But again, trade fell dramatically when the Han dynasty collapsed in 221 C.E. It wasn't until the Tang and Song dynasties in the East along with the Abbasid and Umayyad empires of the west, did the Silk Road become revived. Trade continued as it did before but this time, culture played a large part in being introduced and diffused to different nations. For example, the Muslim empire adopted paper money from the Chinese.

Not only was culture and goods exchanged but religion and diseases were also diffused between the East and the West. By the 1st century B.C.E, Buddhism had traveled the Silk Roads from India to China. Both Buddhism and Hinduism spread through the Indian Ocean trade to Southeast Asia, which included Indonesia and Vietnam. Christianity also diffused through the Silk Road through active missionaries, reaching as far as Persia and India, remaining a prominent faith in those areas even after the arrival of Islam in the 600s. Epidemic diseases also spread through the Silk Roads enough so that it accounted for the sharp decline of